Mayor Vince Gray wants to create a taxi surcharge to pay for a laundry list of upgrades to D.C.'s taxi system, which, per the Examiner, includes:
Installing credit card readers and Internet display systems for riders
A loan program for all D.C. resident drivers to upgrade their fleet to more fuel efficient vehicles
Stepping up enforcement efforts against [...]
Mes Que Un Irritating Bureaucracy: It's not just Capital Bikeshare, pedicabs, and dancers who have a tough time enjoying themselves on the Mall. European soccer champions FC Barcelona, in town to play an exhibition match against Manchester United at FedEx Field tomorrow night, were ordered not to do an informal training session yesterday while wandering [...]
Go ahead and drink all you want this holiday weekend: free cabs will be around to tote you home from the bar once again.
Just before the Fourth of July, the organizers of SoberRide managed to scrape together the $31,000 they needed to keep the program running. MillerCoors kicked in $15,000 (which, presumably, it'll make back [...]
In his column this week on the D.C. taxi industry, LL mentioned the name of Solomon Bekele—calling him "almost a mythic figure, a bogeyman, in local taxi circles."
LL was not able to speak to Bekele prior to his Tuesday deadline, but he has since gotten in touch.
In the course of interviewing various figures in the [...]
The audiotape played in court yesterday by federal prosecutors have brought one question about the D.C. taxi investigation to the fore: Who is Causton Toney, and how is he caught up in all this?
Toney is a former chairman of the D.C. Taxicab Commission, and before that served Mayor Anthony Williams in his economic development office. [...]
Right now, Abdulaziz Kamus has a lot on his mind. First, there's the fact that he's a central figure in the Ted Loza bribery case (Kamus allegedly joined the Fed probe, wired up, and paid Jim Graham's Right Hand Man $1500 in bribes). Today, we learned that key players in the bribery scandal discussed killing [...]
Details are still fairly scarce as the federal taxicab investigation develops, but this much is clear: Most of those targeted are members of the East African community.
First came revelations that the man who bribed D.C. Council aide Ted Loza was none other than Abdul Kamus (pictured), a man this paper once hailed as the "de [...]
Today, federal agents busted dozens of cab drivers and owners in what looks to be a wide-ranging corruption probe. At the center of the investigation is D.C. Taxicab Commission chair Leon Swain Jr., who has headed the commission since July 2007.
Court documents indicate that Swain's cooperation with authorities was what launched this probe and ultimately [...]
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